Dealing with shame is one of the most demanding aspects of psychological work, and, in midlife transition, we can often face this struggle most acutely.

Psychoanalyst Helen B. Lewis tells us, “The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation”. In midlife transition, when people begin to seriously look back at their lives and review them, the experience of shame can become acute, even excruciating.

Taking Stock: A Conscious & Unconscious Process

Beginning with midlife transition, people often begin to take stock of their lives in new ways. This is a tremendous opportunity to open up new possibilities, and find new paths, but it can also be very hard. It’s not an uncommon thing to find that aspects of one’s life cause considerable shame. Often, such a feeling can even seem unbearable. Dealing with shame can become a real problem.

A Fundamental Problem with Who I Am

It’s one thing to feel that something I’ve done is unworthy, and feel full of guilt. This can be an extremely painful, difficult experience.

However, another, even more devastating thing can be to confront the feeling that what I am is fundamentally unworthy, valueless, negligible — sometimes during midlife transition, it can seem like this. This is not an experience that a person can just sit with, in a mellow way. It demands some kind of resolution, a change in consciousness, if I am to continue the forward movement of my life journey.

Refusing to Apologize for My Self

We must come to accept and cherish our own unique being. This is crucial psychological work, and a very demanding and important part of dealing with shame in psychotherapy.

As Marion Woodman once put it, in her uniquely powerful way, it’s essential for each of us to come to such self-acceptance, that we say, “This is what I am. You don’t like it? Tough. I refuse to perform for you anymore.”

Amour Fati

Jung spoke of amor fati, an ancient Latin phrase meaning “to love one’s fate”. We need to find this place in our relationship with ourselves… a very deep form of compassion for who and what we are. Jung also said, “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” In a profound sense he’s right. We have to accept that we can never perform well enough to wipe out shame. We can only accept and have compassion for ourselves. That’s an important part of the journey of good psychotherapy.

Shame is a fundamental aspect and problem of human existence. We need to find ways to cope with it. But it’s a thing that we can often find hard to talk to anyone about, even though we may feel a great need.

No One Gets Through Life Without Shame

All of us experience shame acutely in our lives. Most of us can feel right into times and places where it was acute. Times when who and what we are was exposed to the core and felt to be lacking. Depth psychotherapy knows such experiences mark us with wounds that we often feel that we can’t show to anyone.

Dealing with Shame When It’s Toxic

The times when we feel genuinely ashamed of ourselves can be truly toxic. Depth psychotherapy reveals that we are often most ashamed when we are unable to know and accept who we are. As Jungian analyst Mario Jacoby states:

At a certain intensity, shame has the power to make us feel

completely worthless, degraded from head to foot,

sometimes without our having done anything bad at all.

When it cuts across the partially conscious image we have within ourselves of how we want to be seen, valued and respected, it does particular violence. How can we then find value in ourselves?

Dealing with Shame: Escape?

Given the experiences of shame we all carry in our lives, how can we recover our self esteem, and value what we most fundamentally are? Only in fundamental self acceptance can we hope to move past our bondage.

A famous radio program in the 1940s and 50s had the tag line, ” Only the shadow knows…” There’s some truth in that. The shadow, in the sense of the unacknowledged and unconscious parts of the personality, knows many important things about shame.

Shadow work shows that there is no perfection in this life. That we all struggle with our inability to match the idealized self image that we carry within. Only when we begin to encounter that part of ourselves that knows and accepts all that we are, can we put off our pretensions, and with them, our shame, and realize the ways in which our broken-ness and weakness make us one with the rest of the human race. As depth psychotherapy knows, this enables us to move into our own unique destiny.

A lot could be said about our shame and how it thwarts self acceptance.

Shame is Deep: Maybe as Deep as it Gets

There is a power in this feeling, sometimes greater than in any other emotion. We confront this power when our dignity is lost, when we have gone beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable or tolerable, when we are profoundly alienated from other humans because of who or what we are.

Shame and Fear of Total Loss of the Self

Deep shame can devastate. It can be so intense as to obliterate any good feeling we have about who or what we are, and force us behind an ironclad mask. Shame can be so intense we feel like we’re losing ourselves.

In Our Inner Dialogue, We Can Often Shame Ourselves

We powerfully internalize shaming that we have received. I’ve noted this in psychotherapy for men, but it’s true for everyone. Through the emotion in complexes, we can easily internalize shaming messages received from others. This emotionally charged material can torment us.

Yet, We Can Find Our Humanity in our Shame

A strange thing to say… Yet, true if we can have the courage to explore those places where we are most vulnerable.

A good friend and co-worker died young from cancer. I was asked to be a pallbearer. Back then, I had strong unconscious inhibitions against males showing strong emotion, ground into me early in life. Yet, bearing the coffin, I broke into uncontrollable tears. I was filled with shame, but I couldn’t help it…I loved my friend, and tragically, he was gone. Later, to make it worse, my boss (my friend’s friend and former boss) berated me for my “weakness”. I felt like a selfish little baby.

It took psychotherapy and years of living with that humiliation to accept my vulnerable grief for my friend. “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery” sings Bob Marley. It was in the very heart of this shame that I found something vital to my humanity.

Is getting free from shame is a major issue for peoples’ lives today? I’d welcome your comments.